The relationship between a player and a coach in college hoops, like the height of the rims, is the same on every basketball court. The coach tells the player what to do and how to do it, and the player does it or finds himself living miserably on the bench.

That's not the way things work at Louisville, where Rick Pitino and Russ Smith have transformed the traditional player-coach relationship into a display as amusing as it is avant-garde. For the Cardinals, ranked fourth in the country before their blood feud with Kentucky on Saturday at 4 p.m. ET on CBS, the give-and-take between legendary coach and leading scorer defies the history of college hoops hierarchy.

Smith impersonates Pitino in the locker room before games. He likes to hug his coach when a hug is the last thing Pitino wants. He recently fussed with Pitino's meticulously coifed hair. Last season, in a nationally televised interview, Smith stood behind Pitino and held up two fingers, giving his coach bunny ears.

Pitino has developed coping mechanisms. He coined the term "Russdiculous" at a practice last season to explain Smith's shot selection (and everything else about him). "When you coach Russ Smith," Pitino said during Louisville's run to last year's Final Four, "you have a nervous breakdown on every possession." Pitino later added: "He's not from a different country. He's from a different planet."

As it turns out, this was a problem before it wasn't. Smith only developed into one of college basketball's premier scorers when Pitino gave him the green light to make mistakes along with magic. The coach's laissez-faire approach to his manic guard is far more common in the NBA than college basketball, and Pitino says he relaxed his approach after the stint with the Boston Celtics that preceded his arrival at Louisville.

At the same time, Smith is light years from the stereotypical star player who ignores all rules. "He understands me and what I want," Pitino said. "I understand what he needs to do to be an effective basketball player. He doesn't need handcuffs on."

Smith's take: "Coach likes things to run his way, and the way I play sometimes isn't coachable."

What makes Smith's self-assessment even more remarkable is the gravitational pull he exerts on Louisville's offense. His scoring average of 19.7 points per game, up from 11.5 as a sophomore and 2.2 as a freshman, was 25th in Division I as of Friday. When he's in the game, 33.7% of Louisville's possessions end with him, a usage rate that ranks third in the country. Smith is also responsible for 35.2% of Louisville's shots while playing. Since kenpom.com started tracking this statistic in 2005, Pitino has never had a player take more than 31% of Louisville's shots.

But Smith is capable of meeting Pitino halfway, too. As a freshman, Pitino said, Smith was a "conscientious objector" on defense. Last year, Smith set Louisville's single-season record for steals, and he's on pace to shatter it this season. "We bumped heads a lot, but now he's getting me to turn the corner," Smith said. "I'm starting to listen to him and pay attention a lot more."

Smith still does a lot of things other players don't. Louisville center Gorgui Dieng, who roomed with Smith during the NCAA tournament, recalled waking up at 2 a.m. before a postseason game to Smith doing push-ups. Cardinals guard Peyton Siva said Smith is the only Louisville player who visits friends at Kentucky, which shares a rivalry with Louisville so fierce that in March a fight broke out between a pair of geriatric fans with opposing loyalties at a dialysis center. And the Louisville blog Card Chronicle found enough examples to collect a dossier of Russdiculousness called "Top 153 Russ Smith Things of 2011-2012 Season."

Pitino, who even named one of his racehorses Russdiculous, brings out the best of Smith. And Smith brings out another side of Pitino. Manhattan coach Steve Masiello, who played for and coached with Pitino and has known Smith since he was a child, said he hasn't seen the coach share a bond with a player like this "probably ever." Before a recent game, for example, Smith suggested that Pitino call plays for him in the low post. "I'm hell inside," said Smith, who at 6-foot-1 and 165 pounds wouldn't be the biggest player in some middle-school games.

And it was a Pitino tirade during a timeout last season that really made Smith a cult hero. "He was about to lose it, so I gave him a hug to calm him down," Smith said. "Like, it's OK. You don't have to yell and have your blood pressure rise."

"He does it all the time," Pitino said. "He says, 'Give me a hug. Everything's going to be fine.'"

Smith has been a free spirit since he was a lightly recruited guard from New York. One night during Smith's postgraduate year on a team trip to Maine, South Kent School coach Kelvin Jefferson ordered his players to their rooms after a loss. Hours later, in the hotel's restaurant, Jefferson spotted Smith with a microphone in his hand and the entire team behind him. "They're supposed to be in their rooms with curfew," Jefferson said, "and Russ is singing some Diana Ross."

The karaoke performance taught Jefferson a valuable lesson about coaching Smith. "If you try to change him," he said, "it's just never going to work."

It didn't take long for Pitino to figure that out. In fact, Smith decided to play for Louisville before he was officially offered a scholarship. While in Pitino's office during a recruiting trip, Smith committed to Louisville for the first time. Pitino told him to sleep on the decision. Smith responded by committing again and again in his office, and then again from the airport. Before the end of the night, Masiello said, Smith had committed "nine or 10 times."

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